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John Kennedy Jones arrested
Jones lived at 135 West 119th Street according to the information he gave in his examination in the Harlem Magistrates Court. Some distance from the shoe store, this block between Lenox and 7th Avenue was in an area south of 125th Street with a mix of Black and white residents.
Jones appeared in the lists of those arrested and charged with "inciting to riot" published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Similarly, the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against him as "inciting to riot." When Jones was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the docket book recorded the charge against him as riot for leading others in the crowd to attack the store. Crossed out was an additional charge of malicious mischief for damage to the store window. That charge did appear on the Magistrate Court affidavit in a handwritten note that also listed the forms of riot being charged. Reporting the proceeding in the Magistrates Court, a story in the Home News mixed the two charges together to describe Jones as having "urged the crowd to smash windows," but being held for the grand jury "on a charge of malicious mischief" for which urging a crowd was not relevant. That garbled account likely indicated that Jones faced both charges, as did the six other men who allegedly both urged crowds to break windows and broke windows themselves. Only two of those men, Leroy Brown and Bernard Smith, had both charges recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book.
On March 20, Magistrate Renaud held Jones for the grand jury and set bail at $1,000. A week later, when Jones appeared before the grand jury, they decided to transfer him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial on misdemeanor forms of the charges (as the malicious mischief charge was not recorded in the docket book, Jones was not categorized as being charged with that offense). The judges convicted Jones and on April 1 gave him a suspended sentence, recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter.
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This page references:
- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36, Departmental Correspondence. Box 34, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- New York Penal Law, § 2090-2094: Riot
- New York Penal Law, § 1433: Malicious mischief
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- District Attorney's Closed Case Files, 204006 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives).